Kabaji's Gift
by Quellesirel Peredhil
Summary: Kabaji/Atobe. Kabaji is incapacitated by his own gift. It takes a certain someone to set him free. Here's the Sentinel Verse side story that I promised! If you haven't read it, I recommend you do so first. Kabaji's gift will come in two parts. Rated M for implied dub!con.


1.1

Every day, everything was the same. Kabaji moved where people brought him, and sat where they told him to sit. It was seventh grade. He had occupied this seat in this classroom particularly for eighty-eight days. There were exactly eighty-eight little scratches in Kabaji's notebook. He knew, because scratching only one of them in with pencil would zone him for a half an hour on graphite markings. But it was worth it to at least try and mark the passing of time in some way.

Kabaji was born with a gift. The doctor put it that way, but no one else did. The depth and intensity of Kabaji's five senses was such that he could not function in normal life without a Guide bond to shield and center him. So every day, since the day he came into this world, all the things he was supposed to experience with joy and vividness held him captive.

The bell rang for recess. Chairs slid and feet stomped. Kabaji's ears followed those feet into the schoolyard, but his body remained. Mrs. Bell, the Guide to help some of the more needy Sentinels, patiently coaxed him to standing. The strength of Mrs. Bell's guiding ability was the reason Kabaji's parents enrolled him into the fancy, private school when they moved to England two years ago. She brought Kabaji to his favorite bench and put his model ship in his hands. Cupping it carefully, Kabaji thumbed the glass and let his gaze wander along the incredibly fine workmanship.

"Look at the freak."

"He doesn't even know we're here."

"Probably doesn't understand English."

"HEY LOSER!"

"Haha, seriously?! Still zoned out? Let's try _this._"

He didn't even notice the eighth grade students surrounding him until a rock struck his forehead. The sharp, interrupting intensity of the pain signal to his brain felt like a bullet. The model ship fell from his hands onto the soft grass. He tried to focus away from the pain to see his attackers, but the colors were just too varied and bright for him to see. All the sensory wires in his brain crossed uselessly, intermingling the sensations such that he could barely tell which way was up.

_Stop_, Kabaji's lips moved; no words came out. More rocks struck him. His body reacted by tumbling off the bench and curling into a protective position. He felt the pain of their hatred, punctuated only by their horrible laughter. He was a freak, crushed and crippled by the strength of his own power. Kabaji sunk deeper. He was drowning in a zone from which he hoped to never resurface. Despair suffocated the hope that he could hold on long enough to find a Guide strong enough to hold him. Even if he did find such a Guide, who would actually want him — a sentinel who spent a lifetime too trapped in sensation to build connection or identify?

Kabaji was too far gone to notice that the aggressive crowd had quieted. The children hastily parted for a well-postured boy with dirty blond hair.

"Barbarians, the lot of you," he remarked coolly, glare making it seem like disdain for the bullies, rather than pity on the victim, spurred his action.

"You don't know because you're new, Kay," one of the perpetrators sneered. "He's odd."

Kay rolled his eyes and squatted before the the prone Kabaji. "Thomas, mind your glass house. Go fetch Mrs. Bell," he lay his bare hand on Kabaji's forearm. "Come on, Munehiro, is it? It says so on your jacket. Get up-"

Kay's eyes dilated. Kabaji's hand became a manacle around his wrist.

_Guide,_ Kabaji implored with all of the strength and desperation of a dying man. Kay did not think about how he could hear the voice in his head. When Kabaji dragged him down with him, Kay did not fight.

The screams of the children surrounded them. Kabaji's sharp teeth punctured the glans. _Sentinel,_ Kay called back to him. It was the last thing he could remember before he was sucked into the Sentinel's world of light, sound, sensation. Never before had he seen something so beautiful. There, Kay went to work.

1.2

"You can't do that!"

Kabaji stirred to the sound of his mother's voice. For the first time, he heard it completely. The beautiful sound rang with a clarity unhindered by the beeping of machines, the cars outside, or even the ticking of the clock. All things that would have distorted his mother's voice in the past. Now if only that voice were not so sad. Eager to comfort his mother, Kabaji fought the heavy sleeping medication to open his eyes. He didn't recognize his surroundings personally, but the IV in his arm and the machines hooked up to the boy next to him suggested they were in a hospital. Were they in Japan? Why was his mother speaking Japanese to someone not of their family?

His eyes lingered on the boy in the bed next to him. A rush of warmth flooded through him. There was a connection. "Guide," Kabaji murmured aloud. It was the first word he had ever spoken. A huge bite marred the neck of his unconscious Guide. The arm hooked up to the machine was full of bruises. The memories, the horrible memories, returned to Kabaji, replacing the warmth of connection with the cold, sharp knowledge of how that connection came to be - what he had done.

"Munehiro!" his mother was at his side in an instant, pushing his hair back as he threw up over the side of the bed. "It's okay," she soothed the sides of his face. "Your Guide is okay, just asleep...he's not harmed…"

"You call that not harmed," a hard, coldly amused voice said. "Assaulted in the middle of a playground when he's not even a Guide."

"With all due respect, Mr. Atobe, your son is a Guide," that was his father's gentle voice. Kabaji remembered it well.

A laugh. "No son of mine is a Guide. I'll have words about him later, for allowing your beast of a son to maul him. I'll have the boy transferred from the hospital by early afternoon."

"I told you, you can't do that! Munehiro will die. They have bonded," Kabaji's mother insisted. Her hard grip on his forearm matched the desperation in her voice. "They can't be separated, not before the bond is mature. Munehiro can't take it...your son, too, will be in so much pain."

"So are they bonded, or not bonded," Kabaji's ears picked up the clicking of cell phone buttons. "Better my son suffer, and your son die, than the heir of my company spending his life subservient to that creature."

Kabaji didn't need to look at the man to feel those words pierce him to the core. Not for the first time, he wished that he had never existed. For the first time, he wanted to die. Many things about his life were far from ideal, but he found places to take joy, and most of all, he would never want his parents to have to bury their son.

But he had never been a monster before this.

It wasn't hard to break away from the machines and burst from the bed. Listening to the echoing screams of his parents while running down the hall, however, was the hardest thing he had ever done. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, security - they all chased after him. Nobody, Sentinel or human, was strong enough to hold him back from taking those stairs to the roof.

Fresh air. Outside. The sounds that once blended together senselessly seemed to spread. Kabaji could understand it. Upon remembering why, he thrust his fingers into the protective, chain link fence and effortlessly pulled it apart. Kabaji's feet stepped closer to kiss the curb at the edge of the building. The fall would be enough to end his life.

His life would end, just as it was about to begin. Kabaji grit his teeth and stepped onto that cub to look down. He surged forward - only to find himself being pulled back by some invisible force that he could not break.

That same force turned his head.

"You're not going to kill yourself," Kay approached him with a staggering amount of confidence, for one who had just been mauled. "You belong to me now, naa, Kabaji?"

Kabaji trembled, frozen at the edge of the building.

"Naa, Kabaji?" his Guide implored again.

_His _Guide. His Guide had come to claim him, even after everything Kabaji had done. One foot after the other, Kabaji stepped down from danger. "Usu," Kabaji confirmed. He belonged to his Guide.

His Guide smirked; his smell as he approached lulled Kabaji into complete stillness, even as the blond reached up to cup his face. Those eyes were the most perfect shade of blue to drown in. Kabaji wanted his glass ships to sail in them. His Guide permeated his mind indelicately and Kabaji didn't care. It belonged to the both of them anyway.

_I am Atobe Keigo._ Kabaji closed his eyes, wanting to focus solely on the name. _I will never take your name, Sentinel, but I will take you._

"Usu," Kabaji agreed aloud. His hands yearned to touch, to soothe away the bruises and hurt that were his own doing, to comfort his Guide…

But his Guide did not need comforting. Atobe stood on the very foundation of Kabaji and started to build within his mind. Paths of ice, sleek, strong, and far from cold, grew from Atobe's presence. He defined the pathways for Kabaji's senses and erected powerful shields of their combined strength.

Atobe forged himself a permanent seat in Kabaji's mind, just as Kabaji had established himself with Atobe's physical body. A mature bond, one that went both ways, only broke with death.

When Atobe withdrew his long, calloused fingers, Kabaji picked up on his labored breathing. He opened his eyes just in time to catch Atobe.

Shaken and exhausted by his efforts, Atobe regally demanded, "Carry me." Not that there was any choice in the matter. His legs refused to carry him. So Kabaji did. Holding his mate close like this felt right. The doctors, the nurses, the orderlies, security - all the people who had chased Kabaji - allowed them to pass. Kabaji wondered how Atobe even reached the roof at all.

There was more to his Guide than met the eye.

Kabaji walked by their parents to lay Atobe down in the bed. Instead of sitting in his own, he stood vigilantly by Atobe's.

And his mother was crying. Smiling and crying. Kabaji had never seen such an expression. It took a few moments of confusion before he realized that it was pride.

Atobe's father couldn't be the furthest thing from proud. "Keigo, we are leaving this country immediately. Our personal physician will be on the plane."

Kabaji felt immediate terror. Would he lose his Guide already? He looked to Atobe.

"Very well," Atobe knew he did not have the power to stop his father. "Kabaji is coming with us. Naa, Kabaji?"

The tight knot in Kabaji's chest pulled loose. Atobe was going to keep him.

"Usu."

1.3

Before Kabaji left for Japan, his father gave him something very precious: family rings for a bonded pair.

"They belonged to my parents," his father explained. Kabaji remembered nothing about them, he had been in no state to make memories, but the rings were precious to him all the same. He wore his every day since then.

Wordlessly, he gave the matching ring to Atobe. Kabaji had never seen him wear it. Not even once.


End file.
